Astrostatistics in R: Predicting Solar Flares

For our August meetup, the Astrostatistics Study Group (ASG) will talk about their ongoing project in predicting solar flares.

R-Ladies board member and founder of the ASG, Caroline K. Williams will introduce the Astrostatistics study group and NASA Datanauts program she recently joined. She will also present the basic principles of Deep Learning that will be applied to the project.

Josh Goldberg, a member of the ASG will present on a topic in data science that is often overlooked or does not get much coverage but is required to move any project forward: data exploration.

The ASG adviser, Troy Hernandez will discuss how he got involved in the Solar Flare project as a mentor for the Space Weather Team of the 2017 NASA Frontier Development Lab. He will also talk about the progress of the analysis, and what he envisions for the ASG to achieve in this project.

More about the speakers:
Josh Goldberg, a member of the ASG, is passionate about coding, statistics, and research. During the day, he is a Data Scientist at Nuveen Investments solving business problems with #rstats. At night, he attends University of Chicago’s Masters in Analytics program and trains for the Chicago Marathon.

Troy Hernandez is the Executive Architect at IBM, a Data Scientist, a community organizer, and Chicago R User Group organizer.

Schedule:
6-6:30 -- Food and drinks, Intros & Announcements
6:30-6:50 -- Caroline ASG intro and deep learning principles
6:50-7:10 -- Josh Data cleaning and exploration
7:10-7:30 -- Troy Project overview and progress
7:30-8:00-- Q&A/Socializing/Networking/Hanging out

Thank you to WeWork for providing our meeting space! WeWork provides small businesses, startups, freelancers, large enterprises, and everyone in between with the workspace, community, and services they need to make a life, not just a living. With weekly events, personalized support, month-to-month flexibility, and access to over 200,000 like-minded creators around the world, WeWork is the perfect place to grow your business. Book your tour here! https://www.wework.com/l/chicago--IL?utm_campaign=CHI-2018-04-26-18-RLadies&utm_medium=page&utm_source=wework

Thank you to Microsoft Developer Advocates (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/advocates/index.html) and David Smith for sponsoring food for this event!

Important to Know:
Q: Are men welcome to attend R-Ladies events?
A: Yes, men are welcome at this event. Our mission is to encourage more women and non-binary individuals to get involved in the R community. Please help us by spreading the word about R-Ladies, and by being respectful of the fact that this event is primarily for women/non-binary/female-identifying individuals.

We expect all attendees to abide & be governed by our community code of conduct. Please take a moment to review our R-Ladies Global code of conduct (particularly if this is your first time attending!): https://rladies.org/code-of-conduct/